…Quality is the key if mobile content is to be specific to the medium
Back in the mid 1990s the UK saw the launch of a cable television channel that was set, it said, to redefine our expectation of broadcast television. Its name was Live TV. Live TV is perhaps now best remembered for such innovations as the news bunny and the “Weather in Norwegian”, as well as the glory that was topless darts.
But to me and my friends it is equally remembered for its attempt at a soap opera, “Canary Wharf”. This is because an actor friend of ours was lucky enough to be cast in the serial, and so we watched between our fingers as he tried to remember his lines, delivered unrehearsed scenes in one take and wondered if he would ever play the Dane at Stratford (still hasn’t, although panto in Croyden’s a pretty close second).
The idea of the soap is that it would show the lives and loves of the office dwellers of Canary Wharf. The budget was so low that the action took place in the actual offices of the TV company making the programme. So a series showing the supposedly passionate lives of the high powered young things living and working in the Wharf was acted out against a backdrop of those actually working in the Wharf – who mostly seemed to be eating enough to underwrite Pret A Manger’s annual profit margin and staring disconsolately at the flickering monitors in front of them.
The aim of Live TV was to build up a like-minded community, taking advantage of a new route to market, with heavily accented features and content with an identifiably Live TV look and feel. Unfortunately, a total lack of quality meant that this look and feel came to mean cheap and tacky. But does the original vision sound familiar?
This debacle came to mind when I received news of a made for mobile soap opera looking for a distribution deal. Now I’m sure the quality of Farringdon Road Films’ “Brick It” is impeccable. And it needs to be, because what mobile media needs is not only new content specifically for that medium, and the content we already like, optimised for mobile. It needs the emphasis in all areas to be on quality. People won’t watch something just because it’s on their mobile. They will watch it if it is good enough to watch.
We have recently been tipped off by a UK TV source that a major UK TV news producers is trialling presenter-led mobile TV news, using the main news anchor of the nightly news programme to front made-for-mobile new bulletins. This is the sort of quality we think would add value to mobile TV. There’s none of the cringe factor of watching a second grade product. There are good signs this message is now well understood, with many operators across Europe signing deals with high level television broadcasters, as well as content producers. But the assumption is still that just because it is Discovery or Sky or MTV that will be enough. But will a succession of trailers, adverts and the odd “made for mobile” DVD style extra be enough?
This is what we would mean by the “quality of the user experience”, a phrase you’re going to hear an awful lot of in 2006. Consumers will take it for granted that it is somehow easy to get content onto their mobiles. What they won’t accept is rubbish content. There is an assumption that mobile operators are crying out for content, and all the negotiating power lies with the content providers. But operators need to ask all their providers this first question, “Is it any good?”